


[ . . . one of his childhood's greatest truths.] grown-ups are the real monsters.

by Prettything_uglylie



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bad Parenting, Canonical Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Neglect, Childhood Trauma, Derry (IT) is Terrible, Derry is Haunted, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Pennywise (IT) Being an Asshole, Pennywise (IT) Lives, Pennywise (IT) is Its Own Warning, Pining, Psychological Trauma, Richie Tozier's Internalized Homophobia, The Losers Club Have Powers (IT), The Losers Club Stay in Derry (IT), They all shine, Trauma, dark content, so does (some of) the BAU Team, the Shining - Freeform, yes admittedly i did switch the Jemily tag but it's for plot reasons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:40:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23489239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prettything_uglylie/pseuds/Prettything_uglylie
Summary: When Spencer Reid gets a call from an old victim, he ends up in Derry, Maine with the team -- a place where many things are erratic and illogical but everything happens.
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner/David Rossi, Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Derek Morgan/Spencer Reid, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/William LaMontagne Jr., Luke Alvez/Penelope Garcia, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris, Tara Lewis/Emily Prentiss
Comments: 36
Kudos: 71





	1. the phone call.

**Author's Note:**

> This hit me with inspiration after watching an episode called The Capilanos with a haunted clown and despite me imagining this being in the season 3 to 9 area, it features the little boy from the episode.  
> It, however, does take place around the original team like seasons three to nine where it's Rossi, Hotch, Reid, Morgan, JJ, Prentiss, and Garcia -- Luke will join later as an additional member rather than a replacement.  
> The Loser's Club is a bit older than in the movie and Pennywise is actually awake all the time around - just strikes out a lot more every 27 years.
> 
> Anyways, jesus, sorry, I hope you enjoy this!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Dr. Spencer Reid and Derek Morgan are close to the edges of intimacy, the young doctor receives an alarming phone call.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had been thinking about this because of my fixations on both of these fandoms and then my discussions with a few mutuals which culminated into this fic and I hope you all enjoy it!

> “Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age. The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.”
> 
> **― Edna St. Vincent Millay**

**the phone call.**

It begins exactly as it should have. 

The case, prior to the one that will change everything as they know it, had run long but it had not stopped Spencer Reid and Derek Morgan from entering Spencer Reid's flat with an intention of doing something that classifies as much more visceral than most would be interested in partaking in at 3 am. The time may have brought a new opportunity for rest but both federal agents were too riled up with their lack of a free schedule to truly miss the chance to become intimate but by the time the door was locked, neither could bring themselves to make it to the bed. 

Perhaps, this was how they ended up with Derek Morgan's dark hand stretching the thick band of Spencer Reid's _Doctor Who_ Tardis boxers as the older man kissed at the young genius' neck.

"I love you," Morgan murmured in his ear and Reid can't breathe - his oxygen feels like it has been cut off, as it has hitched in his throat and something about this man he has been in love with for years letting it slide from his mouth so easily makes his whole head spin - which causes him to gasp for breath. Being with Morgan like this, this _intimacy,_ feels like dying in the best ways and he knows what death feels like: how it gilts through your bones and makes the whole world irregular. Morgan makes his heart more full rather than his chest cold and his adrenaline speed up without the feeling of crashing back down - loving Derek Morgan is a little taste of death in all ways. 

"I love you," Morgan murmurs in his ear again as though those words were unheard instead of the reason that he is gasping a dying man's hyperventilations into his left ear, "I love you, and I've missed this. Missed your pretty body beneath me. Wanna fu-" 

And then, because he is sure the world may hate him, Spencer Reid's phone starts to ring. 

Sighing, he shoves gently at Derek's broad shoulders, trying not to take in the warm heat of his lover's body or the broad muscles beneath the thin fabric of the older man's henley against his flattened palms, and he murmurs, "Fuck." 

"Finished my thoughts exactly," Morgan laughs and Reid feels a bit more of the fondness he always carries burrow a place in his chest as he sees the way that Derek's eyes crinkle at the corner and his pristine white teeth are on show from beneath plump brims and Reid satiates a bit of his urge by placing another gentle peck there as he stands from the couch. 

Reid, glancing into the window he ends up across from to see the disheveled state in which Morgan had him -- his hair sticking up in many different directions from Derek's large hands curling through the dark auburn locks and his clothes curled around his own sharp linear frame, and he wants to be pinned beneath him again desperately. 

Until - 

Until he hears the loud, unsteady breathing on the other side of the phone but at that point, the rude delivery of "hi?" has already slipped from his abused lips and he hears Morgan retort to the words with a snide remark, "That's so nice, Reid. Such a good mood." 

_Whoever is calling him at 3 am and interrupting their pathetically small amount of time to have a sex life deserves a bit of ire,_ Reid thinks despite knowing that if he were not sleep-addled or sexually aroused, he would be much kinder to the caller. He's always retroactively kind, tries to be but sometimes mean words spill out of his mouth and he knows it isn't fair - but neither is life, and neither was his father or his mother's mental illness or his own psychosis or the fact that people bullied him for a thing he too hated about himself. He's always retroactively nice. 

He's always nice too late. 

Over his shoulder, he offers Morgan his mild finger as a retort. It makes the man snort and Reid is filled with honey-dipped affection spreading through his chest. 

"Dr. Reid?" It's a murmured utterance from a voice that is uniquely child-like and Reid's breathing irregulates again as he places where he recognizes the voice from. His mind never forgets, he always remembers, for better or worse - 

His eyes widen a bit in horror, wondering what the boy could be doing up at such a late hour and he offers Morgan a significant look over his shoulder full of anxieties and though he is fond of Morgan's playful side that sends warmth through his whole body, he is grateful to see the way his partner sits up to do up his own belt as a thoughtful and concerned frown begins to tug at his lips, clearly getting Reid's message of worry in his expression. "Dylan?" 

"Dr. Reid." The boy breathes again and Reid is caught in the memory of Nathan Harris' dying green eyes in a seedy motel room but he had saved that boy - maybe he can save this one the same. _Always a hero,_ an ugly voice sneers in his mind, sounding both like and unlike his own insecurities but something vaguely otherworldly sounds in the voice and he wonders _what_ he is hearing. His mind turns a profile, _it's because you couldn't save yourself from your mother's illness or from your own mind._ It doesn't help - sometimes, it just doesn't. "He's outside." 

Reid lifts an eyebrow and turns to properly face Morgan before asking, "Who's outside, Dylan?"

If he listens with more determination in mind, he can hear the tick in his own breathing that is clearly overcompressed by Dylan's shallow inhales as though he cannot get enough air into his lungs, but still mimics the lack of air in his own respiratory tracks. He had been meant to take medication at a young age - one that his mother always said would help him breathe a little easier but he never actually took it. 

It's in his genetics not to take his medications, he assumes, even though he knows that is not possible.

He shakes it away - there is so much he has to make himself _not_ think about. 

"The clown," the boy gasps, resonating as a child drifting above the surface of a sea line for the first time in too long and Reid feels the tightness in his own ribs like it's water coursing through them both, "The one who killed my father." 

Water comes out of his broken dam mouth.

"Sal Capilano," he adds a name to the man as he knows children have a tendency to manifest their trauma into the things that go bump in the night rather than monsters with faces, names, and backgrounds. Sometimes, Reid's perpetual childhood gets caught on the stories, the faces that wear normalcy too well - Morgan is there to pull him back those nights. No one is there for this little boy - _you are,_ a voice whispers in the same tone as Morgan's broad hand brushing the hair off his forehead with the same carefulness as a mother with her sick child but more intimacy lying in its palmar flexion creases. "is in prison now, Dylan." 

Dylan needs to breathe. A ten-year-old boy around 5'3" and 100 pounds would take approximately a minute to pass out, his lungs unable to properly expand to capacity and not used to the kind of stress panic episodes endure - not unless you're a ten-year-old child prodigy who's father has just abandoned you with a mentally ill mother, then your lungs are practically built for this shit, aren't they, Dr. Reid? 

He puts his most soothing voice forward, edging on something this side of blatantly overly kind and turns to face the window as he worries the tears in his eyes over, attempting to swallow them. He can feel it in his gut, battering against his ribcage in a way similar to that of the feeling he got when Mason and Lucas Turner were their Unsubs - _this isn't going to end well -_ and he shakes away the feeling, "Dylan, I need you to breathe, okay?" 

Dylan makes a small squeaking noise that the older boy takes as that of affirmation so he continues, "On two, I want you to inhale and on three, I want you to exhale, okay?" 

He hears the minuscule ruffle of his hair against the phone, "One...two..." he hears the inhale and waits a moment, "Three." 

The exhale is loud but it reassures Spencer and he guides the boy, staring into the glass pane of their window. "Where's your mom, Dylan?" 

"She's..." he breathes in again, heavy and sounding as though he is coming to, "at work. I'm supposed to be asleep, I don't know where Lydia is." 

"Lydia?" He parodies the question, edging at protective as he prays to whatever God Nietzche long since disproved that this presumably older girl isn't playing a cruel joke on this old victim, "Who's Lydia?" 

Dylan's next words come out a sob and Reid's chest is too heavy, pains growing in his spine as a faint memory of panic attacks he hasn't had in a long time, "My babysitter. She's...supposed to be here." 

"Where, Dylan?" He's losing him, he can feel it and in his window, he looks the phantom he feels a blur of standing in this looking glass. Dylan's voice is faint but Spencer feels more ghost than the other boy and his words come out rushed as a proxy, "Where is 'here'? Where'd you move again? I got a letter from your mom after we were finished but she wasn't very specific. Talk to me, tell me about your new house." 

He knows where they moved. He doesn't forget things, especially things he doesn't know about but when he had searched Mia Wilson's scrawled out _Derry, Maine,_ he had gotten little more than a few tourism blogs and a few rather innocuous photos - if Spencer Reid had clicked down a few pages from the first, he would have found small Tumblr and additional blogs about the strange patterns of Derry but Spencer Reid prefers to spend the least amount of time on technology that he can. 

"Derry..." he mutters, sounding mesmerized by something and even though Reid feels Morgan's arms wrap around him in a hug from behind, he can't stop staring through their window as though he will be able to see Dylan through the boy's own double-set kitchen window. "Derry is the _problem_ , Dr. Reid." 

As he is about to inquire about what he means by that, his heart pumping in his throat despite his face being an ivory ghost in their window, he is cut off by Dylan's voice, faint and gone with the slightest wind, sounding mesmerized, "I'm sorry, Dr. Reid." 

His heart stops. _THIS ISN'T DYLAN,_ his head is dizzy with the thought and it makes his air hiccup in his chest. 

"For what?" His voice has flatlined. So has his impending sense of dread. It feels like whatever's happening is already in motion, too gone to stop. Bigger than himself. 

Dylan's voice sounds like someone in mind-control from early sci-fi films or like a person under hypnosis. This isn't Dylan. "I shouldn't have called you - " 

"You can always call me, Dylan, I'm here fo-" 

His voice goes on, a show for or against Reid's own psyche, "I just got scared of the Clown...but it's okay. It's friendly. I'm gonna float, Dr. Reid." 

_WHATDOESTHATMEAN -_

"Dylan, Dylan! I need you to get away from the door!" On recount, or perhaps, from Derek Morgan's perspective, one would wonder how Spencer Reid knew the boy was approaching his balcony door, three stories high up and impossible to reach from the ground for any human being. "You need to get away, okay? Dylan!" 

The breaking of glass enters through his lungs and into his heart, impaling him on the edges he is not even present to see but he can still see it in his mind's eye. A broken window, a faceless killer. Dylan's scream is that of a boy who has not known true pain even standing over his father's mangled corpse. For a moment, Dylan breaks script and he comes up, a boy drowned breathing air again but he is pulled back underwater. His moment of clarity is his last one. 

His scream is that only a child on the verge of death can reiterate and Reid's whole body is stiff in his fiance's arms. 

The phone, he hears, falls but it does not go silent. Dylan does, but then another noise courses through the lines of the phone. 

It's loud, wet, something squelching and Reid's whole body recoils as he realizes: _it's somebody ~~something~~ chewing. _

The noise is wet and disgusting but fevered and unapologetic, an animal sinking its teeth into its meal, jaw spread and meat crushed in its carnivorous jaw and Reid wants to vomit. Reid wants to run, wants to throw up, wants to never eat again, wants to jump through the phone, and protect the boy. Spencer Reid, in his apartment, at 3:33 am on a Thursday, in his fiance's arms, wound tight as a board, keeps the phone clutched to his ear. 

It is that of an accident, of a war veteran unable to move when a bomb goes off beside him. It's a state of trauma so severe all you do is _nothing_. 

Then, the chewing stops. 

"Dr. Reid," is lilted into the phone but with surprising action for how quiet his everpresent racing mind is, he knows it isn't Dylan. It sounds like someone measuring it out, tailoring it, seeing how well it fits. Trying it on for size. Reid wants to be sick. _Voices are also there,_ he realizes, recounting it later, the voices of other children that have been slightly warped, touched by something _otherworldly_.

"I'm floating now." 

The line goes dead. 

So does Reid's breathing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be continued on for awhile and I like the idea of it a lot but it may be slow on updates, considering an online school, muse and availability. 
> 
> I am so excited for this fic though! I hope you like it! Kudos and comments keep me Trucking, please! Thank you!


	2. the town.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She pauses for a second, typing carefully into her keyboard and Penelope asks, "Do you think this boy may be an Unsub?" 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is a week late because I got busy with school but I will attempt to regulate this and make this every Wednesday for updates! 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this!

> **"** On that gray street, with the smell of industrial smokes in the air and the afternoon bleeding away to evening, downtown Derry looked only marginally more charming than a dead hooker in a church pew. **"**
> 
> **\- Stephen King.**

**the town.**

Despite the length of the flight, Aaron Hotchner can feel the residue of tension in him as though the feeling was tangible, as though he could collect it in his palm and slam it against the alternate wall of the plane with a satisfying splatter. 

He wishes he could. Knows the way that the guilty tension begins to eat at your heart until you feel maddened by it, the feeling like worms clawing their way into the raw muscle to scrap you dry of this barely functioning organ until the muscle grows weary and decayed as though rotting. Knows how satisfying it can be to display it in aggression. 

Sure, his guilty grief had been of a - he despises the phrasing _higher velocity_ but knows indefinitely that would be its description - _different_ kind but he also knows how hard Reid takes things.

It must be a part of his overactive mind, flipping through scenarios like one would scrapbook pages or recounting statistics related to situations like this and Aaron feels for the boy, beyond tempted to reach out and cup the boy's hand in his own in a reassuring nature and promise that this is not permanent. 

But that is not his job.

He will leave the comfort and the ease to JJ and Morgan and the rest of the Tea, but he knows, in a way, that his insistent pressing to complete the case and his rigid professionalism also acts as a sort of comfort to them. He could see it in Reid's eyes when he had barged into his office, bleary-eyed, debauched and rambling at 4 am - in this case, he was lucky that Hotch practically sleeps in his office - to which he raised a hand to seat the young doctor, told him to breath with gentler eyes than typical and had handled the story matter-of-factly. 

He had called JJ, who had sounded less than chipper to be awoken this early after likely just having fallen asleep, and had told her that Reid has a bad case on his mind that they should be looking into. 

JJ's complaints had stopped dead and he could practically hear her nod, "I'll call the Team." 

* * *

The Jet was quiet of its usual chatter or its complaints of the early hours and though Spencer Reid was raised a quiet boy in a silent house, he craved the familiar noise at this moment. 

He needed to see Prentiss rest her head against the window and groan that it was _too early for this_ and _don't they have another team?_ as Morgan's dark, agreeing chuckle sends a swirling heat heavy into the base of his spine and his smile reads what he doesn't say out loud: _I probably wouldn't have been asleep anyway._

She doesn't say anything. She sits beside JJ, her face a colder mask of the one she typically wears, and her eyes far away but her presence is reassuring and with a strange need, Reid outstretches his palm to her, leaning back in his seat across from Hotch, to where she sits on the couch. Emily jerks, scanning the situation when she notices the movement and he wonders for a moment if she was already half-asleep but she stares at him for a moment, dark eyes wide and surprisingly innocent for how almost-black they are, before she seems to realize what his intentions are, pressing her hand into his. 

He can feel Morgan's eyes boring into him, nervous and contemplative as he worries the situation over and over. He's just as scared as Reid is but maybe for a different reason. 

_They're holding hands,_ Reid thinks, feeling strangely unaware of this but he likes it in the same bit, reminding him of her hand reaching out for his after Benjamin Cyrus and that case. 

It's reassuring. 

_She's_ reassuring. 

* * *

They land and Reid's worry is still palpable when their feet hit the ground and through their drive to the station, his slim fingers tap against the dashboard where they continue to rest against the hard plastics. Morgan's tension feels like a weight in her stomach and she thinks to herself, _this is how you torture Morgan - you let his boyfriend's mind wander with no way of him helping save him._

Prentiss feels the weight on her own chest rest heavy as well as she knows that they don't have anything, not a profile, not a suspect - god, they might not even have a case, as JJ had murmured to her that _they hadn't been_ when she asked why they were called in. 

This is one of Reid's cases, she thinks quietly, like Riley Jenkins and his father, but this time they have no closure. This has no end but also no beginning. 

"That was the prison guard of Sal Capilano," Jennifer Jareau's voice is light from where she sits beside Emily's taut form, hanging up her phone and she is gentle when she leans into the back of Reid's seat, nervous. She worries for him too, they all do. "He's in his cell and he has been behaving well for the past few months." 

Her sweet electric blue eyes scan the bed of the SUV, taking in her adoptive -brother figure's hand intertwined in Derek Morgan's broad hand on the console, an unabashed display of affection that the Catholic woman in Emily Prentiss has always had a hard time reconciling with her own sexuality but watching them becomes a close therapy. 

She had once been aside with both men as a coincidence and because of their case and Matthew's murder still hanging heavy in her mind, she asked if they were religious and Morgan's nod had been quiet but spoken volumes while Reid had just mentioned Nietzche and his rant had been long but respectful and she hadn't minded hearing it. 

He doesn't say anything now. 

The silence is odd, it feels like a cold chill running up the careful edges of her spine and it's so interesting how they can tease Reid about his lack of silence but the second that it is instilled, it feels like a haunt, like a location Prentiss would not want to wander barefoot, like the cold of catacombs beneath her fragile linen feet. Reid's silence feels like an early kiss of death. Reid's silence is an echo of the wooden back of Tobias Hankel's chair hitting the floor, the choking of his overdose, his death, his unmoving eyes - Prentiss is chilled by the reminder. 

She thinks of it sometimes when she edges at being annoyed at their youngest teammate, it hurts and it makes her ache but it reminds her of how fragile his humanity is. 

How fragile he can be. 

How much she would hate to lose him. 

They arrive at the station in black SUVs and to a fanfare of glaring cops and a sour-looking Sheriff. The building itself resembles the Sheriff - short-stacked and greyed in age as though it too had seen a war and Prentiss can tell from his hardened grey-blue eyes that this man has seen gruesome events long before Derry, Maine's murder but she is also certain this man sees the bottom of a beer bottle too often. 

The Sheriff carries hard lines in his face like he has been cracked and aged more than the streets of Derry's sidewalks but Prentiss also thinks she'd be scared to see him smile. 

The doors swing open and she notices that Reid's broken converse hit the gravel before the car even fully stops, the tongues of his old converse hanging out of the black shoe in a way that invites the small pebbles into the opening but Reid's jog carries no carefulness and he approaches the stern spine that is the older man. Prentiss is just outside of their vehicle enough to hear the Derry resident complain, "I didn't call the fucking FBI." 

Heat courses through her and she wants to yell at him about how children are dying but Reid moves through the doorway into the station first, his frame untouched by both the disgust of the Sheriff and the grime of the entrance as he says, just loud enough that she hears it as they walk over, "Well, you've got the fucking FBI." 

And that's it, isn't it? 

They've got the fucking FBI, whether or not they want them. 

* * *

After too great of an argument and a rocky introduction, Oscar "Butch" Bowers had proved to be little help to them, Hotch considers as he gets in the driver's seat. 

He cringes at the memory, it filling his head and scratching against the sides of his mind like sandpaper and he knows that this case is going to be difficult for more than just it's disturbing child murder but for the local police as well. 

"Oscar Bowers? I'm SSA Aaron Hotchner and these are my - " he had started and where many had been mindful and kind in introductions, the rural police officer's voice had been harsh when he had barked out, 

"Oscar? Don't call me that. Everyone calls me Butch - not some fucking name after a pedophile writer." 

He had cringed at the words and the brash tone, making sure to keep it minimal though - the last thing a power-hungry man needs is visible fear, but more likely disgust, from the leading agent of the FBI.

Reid's temper had calmed for a moment, his brain over-ranking his emotions when he asked, "You mean Oscar Wilde?" When the alcoholic nods, looking unamused and rather mad still, Reid continued. "He was one of the first openly homosexual poets and writers." 

"What did I say?" His voice had been gruff and Reid has recited as though from memory - which it likely was but Hotch feels bad that Reid is subject to remember what people who are the epitome of human garbage like this man, have said. 

"Pedophilic, not homosexual." 

"Butch"'s voice had been harsh but nonchalant, slinging the words like he carried no awareness that what he was saying was messed up, "Same difference, really." 

The Team's eyebrows had all raised and the shock had been more vitriol than he believed Butch had intended it to be - not that he seemed to care. 

Morgan's fists had been clenched and Hotch can read the 'if we were alone...' threat in his eyes, Prentiss' stature had changed, JJ's breath choked and he noticed the way that Reid's spindly fingers had moved to twist the silver metal of his engagement ring as though it was his way of showing off his soon-to-be marriage status with Morgan, with a man and he wants to whip it off to throw it in the older man's face. Dave touches his hand slightly and Hotch wants to lean back into his hold, appreciating the support but he doesn't. Not willing to let go of the symbolism of stability in the FBI. 

They had been quick to leave after Butch gives them Dylan Wilson's home address as the eldest man's voice had been a cold casual when he mentioned, "Better get over there quick." 

His eyebrows had raised and Hotch had asked, gently to keep peace with the local police department as he does, "And why's that?" 

Butch's eyes are sharp like a knife, a cruel amusement and he spits aside on the ground, either from chewing tobacco or just toxic masculinity, and with gritty lunacy, he says, 

"They've already started cleaning up." 

* * *

_Cleaning up_ ended up being much more than anyone had bargained for. 

Poor Dylan Wilson was splattered over the silvery slate of his kitchen floor. The floor's tiles are broad, painted with scarlet but also the entrails dragged across the expanse but with a sort of disconnect, a person would be capable of noting the disarray of the young boy's body. His left arm is torn out of his socket but left behind - unnecessary overkill, his throat torn out in uneven edges but his entrails gushing out, laying across the tile with the muscles of his stomach torn back to reveal the gore inside. 

It's disgusting and visceral and something anyone would hate to remember forever, to be haunted by your own memory with a merciless mind. 

Perhaps that is why none of the Team is surprised when their resident genius with an eidetic memory bends out of the room. 

After ducking out of the door, Spencer Reid's feet carry him dodging outside of the home and into their side yard, a space surrounded by emerald green trees and forestry as far as the eye can see from a vantage point but the young agent's back leans into the grey paneling on the side of the Wilson's home after he comes up from vomiting, the contents of his stomach spilled over the outdoor floors and he heaves, gasping like a broken man in the face of a war, as his stomach isn't quite full enough to have a secondary retch. 

When his amber fawn eyes lifted from the ground, orbs hazy and looking disoriented, his mind is quick on the notes of the area near the first set of bushes that had been dipped in a bit of red but when he squints at the area, he takes a closer note of it. 

The thing, ducked in the bushes and hiding as though it is intimidated, is a large entity, a few of its dirty-white joints poking out from the emerald green but the young agent is caught staring into the dark void of the entity's eyes. 

At its worst, the creature's eyes resemble a pit of despair, the eyes deep and dark in a way that feels both predatory and simply doll-like with no souls but the predatory gleam in Its eyes makes his whole body tense up and he is about to lean over for another session with his stomach hurting. 

His heart aches in his chest, beating too fast and he feels like he's going to die - this is how it happens, he's going to die here and like that, his heart jumps, because something else seals over his shoulder. 

Spencer Reid had been unaware of his unconscious steps forward but looking back, it would be about a foot and a half from the paneling of the wall that Spencer Reid's overactive, analyzing mind had not counted taking - but perhaps, that's the purpose, he isn't supposed to take note of it - but the hand seals over his shoulder and when the young doctor spins, horror jumping into his throat and his hand grazing the gun tucked into the waist of his black jeans, he is met with the nervous face of his fiance. 

"Pretty boy," Derek Morgan's careful lips form, eyebrows scrunched in dismay and worry clear in every inch of his body but Spencer Reid heaves in labored breathes, finally feeling safe as he presses his forehead to the strong bone of Morgan's shoulder and allowing himself to take a moment.

 _He's safe,_ his mind will repeat over and over. 

The thing unseen in the bushes would beg to differ. 

* * *

On their way back into the station, Spencer Reid is concerned by the franticness in which they return to. There are police officers - 14, he had counted on their arrival but they seem much more when they are channeling all of that small-town discontent into their frames and not for the first time, Reid finds himself grateful that he grew up in Las Vegas where, historically, they do not care about _who_ you are but what you did when faced with police - scanning the office as though they are conducting a sweep of their own area as phones ring and Spencer is not above his own mind to notice a few people who are very obviously civilians in the area. 

Spencer, however, takes notice of the boy first. 

The boy's hair is short, cut to swing down in front of his eyes with the sides shaved gently - _undercut,_ Morgan had murmured once when he had been looking at ways to cut his own hair - and he's shorter than most: 5'7", 110 pounds, if he were to guess from just his back facing them, and judging by the clothes and the stance taken, 13, maybe 14. 

There is a rigidity to his spine, the agent notes, that is foreign to most boys that young and as they get closer, he also takes a scan of the way that the boy's delicate fingers curl in and out of themselves, making fists sporadically and Spencer steps closer. 

"Hi," The boy radiates an aura of anxiety so Spencer lightens his own voice until it could get caught in the wind but with Morgan's presence at his back, wrapping around him like a safety blanket, he is sure he is heard and the calmness leaks into his bones. 

The boy's head whips around, his frame following shortly after and he stumbles a bit. He looks different than Reid was unconsciously imagining him to look like - he has a face, _well_ , one that he thinks guys like Morgan would classify as 'pretty' with wide cerulean blue eyes and a nervous mouth, features gentle and porcelain doll-like all in one but the fluster across his cheeks is dark and almost angry. 

_He's biting the inside of his lip,_ Reid takes note of immediately and all at once he is thinking about Jeremy Jacobs again. The boy is more nervous than Jeremy Jacobs, Reid notes again and is surprised that he is capable of telling that from this faraway without knowing the boy. 

"Yo-You-You're wi-wi-wi -"

He is surprised at the stutter as well, his posture having remained that of someone with confidence but maybe he's had this stutter for a while and no longer considers it a weakness. _No one knows what is the cause of a stutter,_ Reid remembers having spent wasted hours on sleepless nights trying to answer Gideon's question of why the Footpath Killer stuttered, and at the reminder of the area of just how _unknown_ they are in, Spencer is immediately put on uneven ground and feels a strange sense of unease growing in him. 

Suddenly, Morgan isn't close enough and it feels like the nightmares his mind forms for himself and wraps his unconsciousness into as he stares at the boy. His _eyes_ , Reid thinks and thinks about Morgan's story about the time he had asked for more victims in his beginning days for the umpteenth time, where he thinks that the boy's eyes - so wide, blue as the ocean's bottom, oddly broken and feeling ~~_stolen?_~~ ancient, older than him - will haunt him as well. 

He doesn't know what thought 'stolen' in his mind. 

He doesn't know when his chest started to feel heavy and his throat started to hurt like he was spluttering up the water the boy's eyes have transported him into the bottom of. 

Something clicks, something close to an answer, he feels like if he could reach out to the boy for a moment, maybe - 

"Denbrough!" Oscar's voice is a strange sense of comfort to Reid's ears, still oddly caught up in the glow but the moment feels shattered, the connection gone. "I thought I fucking told you to - " 

"G-Go away, yeah." The boy's face is scrunched in annoyance and an almost private sense of disdain but Reid attempts to lean in even further but the Sheriff starts again, 

"Then, get!" 

He attempts to stop it but the boy clutches his silver and large bike off the grass in front of their building and tilts it up to then bike away but Reid approaches Butch, strangely angry for a reason he can't place and gestures back to the boy, "What the hell was that?" 

"Dealing with the fucking uppities around here." Butch growls out, pulling another cigarette from his apparent bottomless supply in his belt, "Fucking Denbroughs and those fucking other rich cun-" 

Reid chooses then to cut him off, "Why's he here?" 

"Oh, God." The police chief groans, grey eyes rolling back into his moronic skull as he throws his head back like a teenager reprimanded for something worthless and Reid hears Hotch grimace out, 

"Sheriff, if you don't care, how are we supposed to?" 

"Y'all shouldn't-" The greying man replies but Reid cuts him off, determined to get his answer and he feels himself gesture to the way that the boy left again, arm swinging in the direction,

"Who. was. he?" He's starting to feel talked over and after a life of being talked over, nothing quite gets him riled like being unheard. Especially by some Southern asshole who smokes too many cigarettes and will die prematurely and beats his son - _how did he know that?_

Butch growls, having the audacity to sound annoyed, "It doesn't matter." 

"Yes, it fucking does!" He sounds desperate and pissed to his own ears but the others have fallen quiet, at his back like a shield or an army to defend him and he is reassured by their presence again. Morgan stands even closer to him than the others and Reid is grateful for him like he always is but the feeling amplifies loudly. "Who was he? Do I need to slow it down for you?" 

Bowers' jaw clenches and unclenches but Reid is not afraid as he can understand that this is a man taught for war, to battle with his fists and his might and in high school or university even, Oscar Bowers would have scared him but with a sick sense of pride, he knows that if Bowers even lifted a hand to hurt him, one of the Team would put him in the hospital - and Morgan would maybe put him in even worse condition than that. 

_This is a battle of wits and he's come unarmed,_ he remembers Garcia once saying about one of her ex-boyfriends texting her and he revels in how well it fits this moment. 

Bowers grits out, his voice gravel as always when he snarls, "His name's Stuttering Bill Denbrough - he's been on our ass since last October." 

Last October? He questions in his mind and thinks back to his own excruciating headaches in the October prior, which sends a chill down his spine but he knows it is only linked because his mind is trying to find connections wherever they may land. Even if not related...right? 

"What happened in October?" He calms his voice a little, hating the way his anger makes him become someone he's not proud of. _He becomes his mother_ , he thinks as he recognizes the almost crazed desperation in his voice when he's infuriated. 

"His little brother went missing."

Reid's mind fries at that, "Missing? How many missings are there?" 

* * *

As he and Prentiss are flipping through Missing case files while the others talk outside of the side room given to them, his phone begins to ring in his pocket, a dull buzz he doesn't hear for a moment as he's overtaken by his own thoughts. He looks up at Prentiss, who smiles at him gently with a reassuring look across her face before he stands to answer the phone, 

"Garcia." 

"My baby boy toy, how is the future Mr. Morgan doing in my polar county?" She greets and he can imagine her spinning around in her office chair as she talks to him. It puts a warmth back in there and on his empty stomach, he is reminded of how often she prods his ribs and tells him to eat more.

He laughs a little, the charm of Penelope Garcia's glorious warmth igniting in his own chest and she compels him not to think so much, "I'm good. How are you doing...Baby Girl?" 

He knacks the name on awkwardly but hopes that the borrowed pet name sends the same light glowing feeling in her chest and she giggles on the other end, "Ohh. Do I have the wrong Morgan, Sex Kitten?" He cringes at that one, remembering her "theory" about the name related to his own sex life, "I'm flattered to be the turning point in your bisexual-induced reawakening." 

"Never discontinued that but okay." Garcia makes him feel like he can breathe a little easier and he is so very grateful to his lover's best friend for it. He needs a breath from this darkness for a moment.

Garcia hums, sounding satiated before she asks seriously, "Do you want to hear what I just found?" 

"Absolutely." He nods to Prentiss, who is smirking slightly and he raises an eyebrow at her in an unasked question but she waves a hand at him, "Can I put you on speakerphone?" 

"Oooh, putting our love affair out there?" She teases, "That's hot." 

He stifles an eye-roll, knowing how Garcia loves him, and Morgan, and them together but also sheepish at the idea of anyone - except Morgan, he's gotten used to Morgan - using those terms to describe him directly but she continues, voice serious, and leading into something more, "So, this case had never come up on our radar before, right?" 

"Correct, Penny," Emily says, leaning forward and intrigued to the girl on speakerphone as her hands knot in front of her - nervous tick, frustration, she hates that no one has done anything about this either. Reid hates profiling her. 

"I got an email from a boy named Ben Hanscom about Derry, about the missings and the children presumed dead." She starts and her voice sounds more upset, "He had seen us in one of our Criminology/Profiling 101 conferences and he said that he thinks he could trust me." 

"Trust you?" Reid questions, worried about the phrasing and he can picture Garcia's own nervousness like a dimension where he can see her. It racks her lips and her entire frame, weighing down her shoulders slightly and Penelope Garcia deserves more than to have her beautiful eyes look so sad. 

She murmurs, voice meek in a way that immediately registers to him as wrong - Penelope Garcia doesn't do meek in the same way she insists she doesn't do white after Labor Day. He had only understood what half her sentence meant that time, "He said he doesn't think the police there care." 

"That's..." He wants to say wrong because these people have to care, right? Why do their job if you don't care? But his hazel eyes glance at the piles of yellowing paperwork littering the dark oak desk of missing children and reports hastily filled out, if properly filled out at all. He finishes his own sentence, sounding macabre, "...probably accurate." 

"Okay, just thought I'd let you know." She starts her goodbyes and he stalls her for a second, flipping off speakerphone and clutching his phone to his ear, turning away from Prentiss to murmur with the same technique he had used to try to keep Garcia out of his almost-confession about his mother when the Fisher King was still running around, 

"Can you run a background check on a boy named Bill Denbrough?" 

She pauses for a second, typing carefully into her keyboard, already on another mission likely, and Penelope asks, "Do you think this boy may be an Unsub?" 

_Does he?_ Does he think that Bill Denbrough may be the consequence of a broken system whose own missing brother - one of the first ones to go missing - was a trigger to begin killing boys around his age? Does he think that his anxiety is the worry that the police will come on to what he has done? Does he think Bill Denbrough is visiting the police to check on where they are in their investigation? Does - Does he think Bill Denbrough is dangerous? 

"Honestly, I don't know." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, we've now briefly met Bill and Ben has been mentioned! We will be getting (most of) the Losers in the next chapter! I hope you enjoyed this! Kudos and comments motivate me!

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this!
> 
> Kudos and comments are God Tier! Please, please reinforce me!


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